Sin City explodes onto international chart

In its first weekin major European territories, BVI's Sin City exploded onto theinternational chart in second place with $11.7m.

BVI will be aimingto do similar business to last year's Kill Bill Vol. 2 - and the firstmajor week for Sin City certainly looks good to head in that direction.

Kill Bill Vol. 2's first week took$17.7m in its first week but played 2,454 screens in 20 territories compared toCity's 1,831 screens in 16 territories.

Thehighly-stylised film saw strong numbers in a host of territories but impressedmost in Italy where it toppled Star Wars: Episode III to take poleposition, one of the first major territories in which Star Wars hasrelinquished its hold.

The highest singleterritory gross came from the UK where a second place debut, behind EpisodeIII, saw Sin City gross $4.45m (£2.45m), including Thursday previewsof nearly $660,000.

The film alsoplaced second to Star Wars in territories including France, TheNetherlands and Denmark, while Belgium and Russia saw third place positions.

In the Netherlandsindependent distributor RCV Entertainment became the first independent Dutchdistributor to distribute a film on digital prints, which played in a few ofthe 83 screens playing the film in the territory.

In Russia the filmplayed seven days for a first week gross of $1.1m for local distributor West,although it had to settle for third place following competitive launches for Madagascar(UIP, $2.3m) - contributing to the animated film's international chart leapin its second week - and local comedy thriller Zhmurki.

Sony PicturesReleasing International's The Longest Yard saw strong launches inAustralia and Mexico, placing second in both and suggesting good potentialahead which may have been doubted in many quarters given the usual poorperformance of American sports movie and Adam Sandler internationally.

However, the filmwill not continue its international roll-out until mid-July while most majorEuropean territories are well out of the way of blockbuster season in Septemberand October. Australia's $2.5m (A$3.3m) led the way at the weekend.

Fox had cause fora double celebration after its two summer releases crossed new benchmarks. EpisodeIII's international tally kept level pegging with North American figurescrossing $300m. However, while Star Wars claimed the record for fastestfilm to $300m in North America this week ahead of Shrek 2 it is laggingwell short of The Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King internationally.That film had earned $390m by the end of its third weekend on internationalrelease while the $400m mark had been crushed by the close of its third fullweek. Meanwhile Kingdom Of Heaven passed $150m for Fox.

In Japan hit film Negotiatorfinally relinquished its lead to local romantic drama Denshaotoko. Sinceboth film's are released by Toho the distributor will have no cause forcomplaint.

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